Inspiration.
We don’t always know where it comes from but, when it does, it often hits like a bolt of lightning. It can be visual and unspoken. It can be real or imagined. We sometimes find it in the works of others, sometimes in their words. I’ve found inspiration in my dreams, images and paintings that spoke to me in my youth, and in the nuggets of wisdom left by the people who came before me. Each of the following quotes has triggered a change in my approach or process or perspective at one time or another, and influences my photography (not to mention how I see other people’s work).
What are the ‘words of wisdom’ for you?
“You don’t take a photograph, you make it.” ~ Ansel Adams
“Look and think before opening the shutter. The heart and mind are the true lens of the camera.” ~ Yousuf Karsh
“Photography for me is not looking, it’s feeling. If you can’t feel what you’re looking at, then you’re never going to get others to feel anything when they look at your pictures.” ~ Don McCullin
“The eye should learn to listen before it looks.” ~ Robert Frank
“The difference between a professional and an amateur is that a professional learns from their mistakes, an amateur doesn’t even realise they made one.” ~ Darton Drake
“There is only you and your camera. The limitations in your photography are in yourself, for what we see is what we are.” ~ Ernst Haas
“Which of my photographs is my favourite? The one I’m going to take tomorrow.” ~ Imogen Cunningham
“It is more important to click with people than to click the shutter.” ~ Alfred Eisenstaedt
“Beauty can be seen in all things, seeing and composing the beauty is what separates the snapshot from the photograph.” ~ Matt Hardy
“There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer.” ~ Ansel Adams
“A portrait is not made in the camera but on either side of it.” ~ Edward Steichen
“It’s one thing to make a picture of what a person looks like, it’s another thing to make a portrait of who they are.” ~ Paul Caponigro
“Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst.” ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson
“The best thing about a picture is that it never changes, even when the people in it do.” ~ Andy Warhol
“All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth.” ~ Richard Avedon
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